It was Nieman reunion time last weekend, and the honored veterans of journalism were gathered in the very shadow of Harvard. Our panel was called: “Voices from the New World of Journalism.”
“I think we’re fooling ourselves a little bit in how much change is needed,” Michael Skoler of American Public Media said. The needed transformation lies well beyond the use of new tools. “People expect to share information.” But that goes against our ethos – getting the scoop, keeping it exclusive. Nor does allowing people to participate in – not just respond to — our work come naturally. “Deep in our souls we feel like that’s dumbing down our journalism. I would argue that it’s smartening it up.”
Mara Schiavocampo, NBC’s digital correspondent, agreed. When the crowd’s complaints about the low quality of public contributions confirmed Skoler’s dumbing-down assumption, Schiavocampo stressed, “More voices is a good thing for all of us. We just need to make sure we all operate by the same rules. It’s a journalism of partnership.”
What drove Schiavocampo to her current ultra-multi-media whirlwind professional life was a desire to “produce media the way I consumed media.” For others attempting this, she warns, authenticity is extremely important. Too often, “Big media are the parents pulling on ripped jeans and going to rock concerts in order to be cool.”
Joshua Benton, director of the new Nieman Journalism Lab, urged the crowd toward an awareness of just how many folks are putting useful information out there. Of the 600 RSS feeds a day that he reads, fewer than 10 percent are by journalists.
We need to be asking, “What can we do to connect with those people?” True, he noted, “It’s a difficult thing to create a healthy online community.” We need to set guidelines, make them clear, and follow them. And the journalists have to be involved in the comments. “It’s easy to lash out at someone who isn’t human to you.” Given the relationship we’ve trained people to expect of us, “we have to rehumanize ourselves.”
And then this last comment, which must have gripped me so much amid this crowd of worthies that I somehow failed to note its author: “The future just happened. It destroyed the priesthoods.”
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I really don’t think anything has been destroyed with journalism. Things just change with time.
What a great article, I always reading what you write.
This shows one of the main problems with journalism. The article has some colorful quotes, but very little useful information in how to actually accomplish these goals.
Mainstream journalism is still controlled by professionals who never really had much contact with their audience or with people outside their news organizations who wanted a voice. There is still a need — and will continue to be a need — for professionally trained reporters and writers, but we are not sure where they will fit in to the new information mix.
http://www.jprof.com
I’d say Brandon and Jim are BOTH right, and I’d say thanks much to John.
I go along with what your panelists said. My takeaway is that both newsrooms and nonjournalists need to adapt. A new lock-and-key relationship will appear; we just don’t know what it will be. In general, newsrooms don’t need more “opinions” from the public; they need to know what people observe. And the nonjournalists need to learn how to describe what they see without feeling that their words must rise to the level of professional journalism. Newsrooms should change internally to work with this new material and they can help create the environment in which regular folks can learn how to play their part.